


fire in my veins [but there'll be better days]

by cluelesspaladin



Series: The Kink Collective [8]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adam lived bitches, Adam using his scars as a disguise so no one recognizes him, Adam's inner monologue, Adam's sass, Aftercare, Anal Sex, Angst, Anxiety, Body Dysmorphia, Body Worship, Eventual Smut, Fingering, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Keith is a dense idiot who doesn't clue in, M/M, Mentions of Other Voltron Paladins, Multiple Orgasms, Overstimulation, PTSD, Past Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Porn With Plot, Prostate Massage, Prosthetics, Scars, brief mention of alcohol abuse/consumption, canon-divergent AU, depressive disorder, fix-it AU, getting together fic, it gets soft okay, kadam, mentions of vomiting, some hurt/no comfort, traumatic injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:33:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23525434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cluelesspaladin/pseuds/cluelesspaladin
Summary: Adam is willing to concede he's seen some shit. Done some stupider shit, he'll grudgingly accept.But use his newly deformed face to Clark Kent the hell out of Keith Kogane?That's a new one.-Two idiots befriend each other and then realize they've caught feelings down the line. It's a whole thing.
Relationships: Adam & Keith, Adam & Keith (Voltron), Adam/Keith, Adam/Keith (Voltron)
Series: The Kink Collective [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683835
Comments: 5
Kudos: 31





	fire in my veins [but there'll be better days]

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt Eight: Adam/Keith, Scars
> 
> This one... really ran away from me. It grew plot and decided that there needed to be plot before we got any kind of porn. Sorry, all.

As one of the very few people in the Garrison who was familiar with literally any of the shit that had hit the fan in the last decade, Adam was fairly confident that there wasn’t a lot left in the world that he hadn’t seen.

To summarize some of said shit, however;

His chronically ill and potentially terminal ex-boyfriend had decided that going to space and risking his life was better than sticking around and marrying him.

Said ex’s adopted protégé being royally pissed about said breakup and the events that followed.

Said protégé and he getting into it the night after it was announced that said ex was suddenly declared dead due to pilot error- of which he could admit the pilot error was fishy, but dead was dead and one does not miraculously come back from that.

Except that apparently it wasn’t as impossible as he’d previously thought, because said ex came crashing back into Earth’s stratosphere a year later before getting whisked off by aforementioned protégé and three other Garrison students, later pronounced kidnapped and possibly dead.

From there, it kind of snowballed, to the best of his memory.

Being made of alien life beyond their solar system, discovering that said aliens were pretty much dead set on conquering Earth and everything else that stood in their way, getting assigned to head the fighting forces in the sky, getting shot out of the sky by previously mentioned alien life, crawling back to base with what felt like half of his body blown on, medically induced coma, yada yada yada.

Oh, and the previously thought dead students/protégé/ex were all still alive and part of an ancient defender of the universe,

Point of the matter- Adam had seen some shit.

He supposed he really shouldn’t have been surprised to see Katie Holt- and damn, the last time he’d seen her she’d been clinging at Matt’s side when they’d done a tour of campus before launch- taking apart some kind of motherboard on the sheets of her hospital bed when he’d done his usual rounds one day. She went by Pidge now, he was sure he’d heard somewhere.

Adam was still under confinement himself- apparently after being shot out of the sky, losing a leg and being put into a medically induced coma for almost three weeks meant that he was classified as one of the long-term patients on the floor.

(It basically just meant that they wanted to keep an eye on him and make sure he didn’t pull anything drastic once they’d hooked him up with a prosthetic leg the eldest Holt had helped design and attach to the mutilated stump of his thigh.)

It also meant that he managed to get a pretty good look at the rest of the Voltron paladins, though.

The once thin twig of a kid McClain had filled out and grown several inches taller- a skilled sniper who far outclassed any of the guys on base. Adam would know- his room was one with a pretty impressive view of the courtyard that doubled as a training area as well as a shooting range, depending on who managed to claim it first thing in the morning.

Garrett? Now that had been a surprise. Adam distinctly remembered seeing the kid vomit during or after every single simulation that he’d been in before vanishing. Now it turned out he was flying a giant alien cat robot capable of doing everything and more that the simulator was. Not to mention that nearly all of the fat he’d carried had transferred into muscle. He was pretty sure Garrett could break him in half, if he so desired.

Keith had gotten big since the last time Adam had seen him.

Not in the sense that he’d gotten taller- which he _had_. The person he’d once known as a small, scrappy kid had bulked up into one of the most muscled, beefy men Adam had _ever_ seen. And that was stacked up against Shiro, who had apparently also gone to the same bootcamp as Keith and the rest of the paladins.

Shiro he’d seen in passing, though he was almost certain that his ex either hadn’t seen him or didn’t recognize him with the amount of scarring and weight loss.

Oh, and the new leg. He was pretty sure that one would throw anybody off.

Adam was fairly confident that none of the paladins knew who he was, or if any of them had even seen him ghosting around the floor. Sam would protect him with patient confidentiality if anyone decided to start sniffing around that route; to be fair, there wasn’t anyone else who might possibly care.

Call it the downfall of a Galra invasion; the family he’d had already disowned him, the others dead from the fighting that broke out afterward. Hell, he was pretty sure that his emergency contact was blank after taking Shiro’s name off of it way back when.

He yawned, leaning into his IV drip stand as he limped down the hall. Oh well. He’d made his bed and laid in it years ago. Now he just wanted to get back up to his new one hundred percent so he could get the damn medal they wanted to present him and retire somewhere quiet.

Huh. Maybe Kogane had been onto something when he’d run out into the desert after all.

The only perks about being one of the long-term residents- read, the _only_ long-term resident- of medical was that everyone knew better than to try and tell Adam he couldn’t go somewhere. Sure, the connection port of his prosthetic would ache like a bitch later, but there was only so long he’d allow himself to be pushed down and drugged up in bed before he needed a change of scenery.

Hence his current venture down to the communal space down the way from his room.

Well, part of it. The other was the familiar ache of emptiness that lingered in his chest every time he saw people reuniting down in the yard from his lonely little room. Usually it hit harder in the dark of night when he was too achy and twitchy to fall asleep, but that stupid need to even want a hug was beginning to get ridiculous.

The communal space was by far the most attractive part of the building, in his opinion. There was an entire wall of windows overlooking the desert, no sign of human life to be found. Somehow it had been left untouched during everything that had happened. Now, there was no glowing green dome surrounding the Garrison. No pin prick purple lights sparkling on the horizon. Nothing but the desert, the far-off mountains, and the sliver of the moon shining weakly onto the scraggly beginnings of plant life.

Despite himself, he couldn’t help the faint sigh of relief as he dragged his usual chair over to the furthest corner of the room, angling himself so that he would be able to see if anyone entered, but they wouldn’t be able to get a good look at him.

He’d been told that the scarring was rather extensive, after all. And with statements like that, who needed to confirm in a mirror?

He did.

He absolutely did.

(And it was about as bad as he could expect from getting shot, crashing into the desert and crawling twenty something miles with useless legs and his stubborn, stubborn heart refusing to give out.)

Thankfully, his face and neck weren’t as bad as the rest of him. He’d been lucky that he’d kept vision in his left eye- for that matter, he’d been lucky the entire left side of him was still functional. His right leg, on the other hand, existed to spite him with the prosthetic’s lightweight material shining in the dim light from outside.

Adam grunted as he finally sat down, hand going to his thigh as the port tweaked, mindful of the drip as the stand tugged at the needle that felt permanently attached to his forearm.

They told him that it was a combination of fluids, minerals and medication, since he still had a mean gag reflex with taking them orally. And who could fault anyone for wanting to retch them up the second they touched their tongues? It tasted _foul_.

With some fiddling and rearranging- pulling his oversized green beanie over the still growing back hair- he finally got into a position he could consider comfortable, leaning his unmarred cheek against the wall as he allowed his thoughts to drift. It wasn’t his favorite thing, presenting the more damaged parts to the world, but he’d discovered early on that the scar tissue was still highly sensitive and he didn’t terribly enjoy the stinging, prickly sensation that had followed him for several hours after said incident.

Call it being familiar with the sounds of someone staging a jailbreak, but he heard the sound of approaching footsteps before the person accompanying them appeared in the door.

He didn’t bother saying anything. It would only mean he would have to make an attempt at socialization, and quite frankly, Adam was in no mood tonight to be talking to anyone unless it happened to be a therapist.

Which was ironic, considering he didn’t talk to the therapist they’d assigned him as it was.

Look at him, taking after Shiro years after the fact. Stubborn ass hadn’t gone to therapy either.

It isn’t until there was a muffled curse and the tell-tale sounds of an IV stand escaping its recipient that Adam bothered to glance over, shoulders tensing and releasing in the same moment.

Keith.

The doctors and nurses alike lit up like a Christmas tree every other day as they fussed over the Black Paladin of Voltron. He’d been the worst off of any of the paladins when they’d been brought in; something about a serious head injury that had resulted in a lot of concern and a medically induced coma. Adam had heard that he’d finally been brought out of it, but it seemed that the security sucked in that wing, because Keith was now gingerly heaving himself into the loveseat, one leg in a cast.

Lucky him.

He must have made some kind of noise; those eerie purple eyes locked onto him like a hawk in heat.

(Strange wordplay, but he’d run with it.)

“Sorry.” The other man muttered, looking sheepish for a moment. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Adam shrugged, one shouldered. “Hey, it’s a free world. Do what you want, kid.”

Inwardly, he was screaming that he hoped to God Keith didn’t recognize him. In the other, fractionally more rational part of his brain, he hoped that he did.

Why? He had no clue.

Maybe he’d been locked up inside for too long; that was a pretty valid option at this point in his life.

Or maybe he just wanted a shred of validation that he hadn’t changed as much as he felt.

… Nope. He was not thinking about _that_ right now.

“Thanks.” Keith sighed as he finally found an angle for his leg, sinking into the couch like it was the best thing to grace the planet. Considering that Adam knew for a fact that the staff had pitched in to buy it to replace the pitiful excuse for furniture that had been in here before, it was. He’d spent some time in that loveseat himself enjoying many a stoned nap in the beginning of his jailbreak days.

God, was this what it was like to feel old?

Achy everything, bad hip, bad leg, needed an IV line to keep him upright, meds every morning- Yep. He was an old man trapped in a twenty-nine going on ninety-nine-year-old body.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

“So,” Adam’s traitorous mouth decided to ask, “how does it feel to be back on Earth?”

“It’ll feel better when I’m allowed to go anywhere unattended.” Keith replied, dry as the desert outside the window.

“It’s not so bad. If you can’t bribe the nurses, you can usually get away with making a run for it in the middle of the night.” He shrugged again. “Unless you’re on their shit list. Then they’ll come looking.”

“You sound like you’ve been there.” Keith said. Adam could see him in his peripheral, face turned in his direction.

“They’ve given up.” Adam snorted, looking back out at the horizon. “There’s only so long they’re willing to put up with it before deciding you’re not worth it. _But_ \- you get the fancy IV lines with all your meds so they don’t have to hunt you down to shove them down your throat otherwise, so pick your battles wisely.”

“How long have you been here?” Keith’s voice was too damn soft as he asked the question.

“Coming up on three months.” He said anyway, lips quirking up as he thought about what some of the nurses called him. “I’m what they call a long-term resident.”

“What happened?”

The sad part was, it didn’t sound like he was pressing for details. It sounded like the other man had already guessed and was opening the door to a conversation about it. 

“I was gunned down. Crashed in the desert and presumed dead until I showed up a few days later with a mangled leg and looking like I should’ve died well before I made it.” Despite the circumstances, Adam couldn’t help the smug grin that stretched his lips. Iverson had nearly shit himself once he realized that it was one of their own crawling up to the front door. “They keep telling me I’m getting a medal, but-“

“A medal for surviving isn’t a medal, is it?” Keith finished.

_Damn_ , what had the kid gone through up in space to be so knowing about all of this?

“Got it in one.” Adam nodded, huffing out a sigh against the glass. “I used to just want to fly. Now I might never be able to do it again.”

_Stop talking!_ His brain screamed at him.

Adam ignored the voice in his head. Definitely not the first time, probably not the last.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Adam snorted. “Nothing any of us can do about it now.”

They fell into a silence, Adam’s thoughts milling around his head as he tried to think of what he was going to do. Hopefully he’d be able to make a break for it before the sun came up, or Keith might have other words to say to him. Especially after the way that they’d left things all those years ago.

It hadn’t been pretty.

Keith, banging on his door in the middle of the night, nearly foaming at the mouth because how _dare_ Adam not tell him anything about the crash, how _dare_ he believe Shiro was dead, how _dare_ he have abandoned Shiro when he needed him most. Both of them said things that Adam regretted now, most of them things hurled to cause as much pain as possible.

Keith hadn’t been the only person to lose Shiro that day.

Adam had grieved for a long time after that. It hadn’t been until he’d been put in charge of the MFE team that he’d finally dragged himself out of his slump. Finding purpose with another crew of kids had been what he needed to leave that old part of him behind.

At least until now.

Now, his MFE team were off providing Earth-wide humanitarian relief. The last time he’d talked with any of them had been before the crash. Did they even know that he was alive? Or had the Garrison left it so that his record reflected a dead man’s name?

It didn’t matter. He didn’t feel like Adam anymore.

A soft snore alerted him that the other man had dozed off. Whatever they had in his IV line was probably more medication than his- designed to keep him down long enough that he could heal.

As quietly as he was able, Adam got to his feet, wincing as the port tweaked again. He’d have to have a word with Sam and the good old doctor when his next assessment came up.

He froze as he turned around and encountered the biggest Galra he’d ever seen standing in the doorway, amber eyes gleaming.

Adam wasn’t an idiot- he’d seen the pair of Galra who sat next to Keith’s bedside whenever he’d done his rounds. What relation they had to the kid was another matter, but he wasn’t going to go sticking his nose in that business if he valued his life.

He nodded his head the best he could in greeting, the scar tissue pulling uncomfortably as he hobbled by. She- Adam was fairly certain- blinked slowly back, arms crossed over her chest as she apparently deemed him nonthreatening and resumed her watch over Keith.

“Watch for the nurses. They tend to start rounds early.” He said quietly. “If you head them off it should give him a bit more rest.”

She nodded once.

Adam figured it was good enough, dragging his IV line behind him as he went back to his room.

He should have known that his fragile peace wouldn’t last with the paladins so close by.

And yet… he felt better now than he had since he’d woken up to find out they’d had to take his right leg.

Hm.

Food for thought.

-

Physical therapy sucks ass, and Adam would be happy to tell anyone who thought otherwise that they could shove it because he was currently in hell.

Because of his late-night excursion, they’d had to put off his leg because of the swelling around the port of the prosthetic. Which he kept calling a port for no reason since there wasn’t any attached limb. It was all just scar tissue underneath a prosthetic that they were testing out in that he would wear it for longer than usual prosthetics and take it off only when he wasn’t on his feet.

Which, as one could imagine, wasn’t terribly often in his case.

So, Sam and Doc Aleary were putting him through his paces in attempting to strengthen his injured side up again. Motor skills were still iffy at best on his left hand- unfortunate, considering he had to be one of the only people on base who happened to be _left-handed_.

There was something to be said for how easily Adam could be driven to the brink of emotional taxation when he realized just how hard it was going to be to get anywhere close to what the projected new normal would hold for him. At just how much had been taken away from him in one split second.

So it really shouldn’t have been such a shock to hurl the self-titled instrument of torture he’d supposed to have been using to work the damaged nerves in his hand against the wall with a wounded snarl, trapped on the floor with one leg as Sam looked the prosthetic over against the far wall.

Aleary, bless her soul, knew well enough to let him stew in his brain for a bit. Back in the day, they’d had a brief fling before she’d branched off into medicine and he into the space-exploration program. Outside of Shiro or perhaps Iverson, she’s the next best Adam expert on base.

He hated seeing himself in the mirror. Hated it even less when he had to wear the short-sleeved shirt so he could go to physical therapy and get everything worked out of him.

Ha.

“You ready to try again?” Aleary asked after she’d given him ten minutes to stew over it. It wasn’t an actual option to leave; she knew his limits too well by now. No, if he didn’t accept help and keep at it, she would goad him into it one way or the other. She was sneaky like that.

“Fuck off.” He grunted, no heat to his tone as he held out his hand for the stupid little piece of equipment that would continue to make him miserable for the foreseeable future.

“Atta boy.” She grinned, ruffling his beanie as he squawked and swatted her off.

It was another hour of dark muttering, cursing and a thorough massage of the swollen tissue of his thigh before he was handed off to one of the nurses to get hooked up with his daily dose of medical cocktails.

Adam was so looking forward to the day that they didn’t need to stab him and pump him full of the damn things. It was like going to the doctor and not getting a sticker, but it was every day and he didn’t feel any better about it every time.

_So_ rude, right?

It was enough to knock him on his ass- he barely made it back to his room before he was out. He did, however, remember to yank off the prosthetic before he passed out.

And they said he couldn’t be taught.

-

He should have known better than to think he would get a full night’s sleep.

Adam bolted upright with a scream, fire blazing behind his eyelids as he scrambled to hit the lights. The stench of burning flesh stunk up his nose as he proceeded to lean over the side of the bed to relieve his stomach of everything that he’d eaten the day before, only belatedly realizing that he was falling before he hit the ground hard enough to knock what little air he had out of his lungs.

Fuck.

He lay there, gasping for air, sweat dripping off of him as the tremors worked their way through him. Thank God that the phantom pains had decided to take a vacation for tonight- otherwise he was pretty sure that he wouldn’t have been handling his episode as well as he was.

Which was just barely, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Leaning his face against the cool metal of the bedside table, he breathed in slowly, hating how the light made him feel. It was one thing to suffer in silence in the dark. It was another when your trauma woke you up in a panic and you needed some kind of sign that it wasn’t happening all over again in real time.

Right on time, there was a knock at the door. The nurse on call- Judy, he thought distantly. A nice enough older woman who seemed like she knew all too well what he was going through. Hell, he was pretty sure she’d been a humanitarian worker in the far east- she probably knew exactly what he was going through.

She poked her head around the corner quietly, gaze soft as she grabbed his prosthetic for him and brought it closer.

“I’ll go make you some tea.” She said, once she’d made sure that he wasn’t about to keel over. “And then we’ll get you set up down in the communal room for a bit while I tidy up here.”

He nodded jerkily at that.

“Do you need anything for your side?”

No. Maybe. Probably not, but he would tough it out because the pain meds they stuffed him with made him feel like he had zero control over anything in his life and when he was like this, he needed to feel like he had some measure of control or he would go absolutely insane and start rambling in the back of his mind like he was doing right now.

No.

The second she left, door closing behind her, he cried. He felt like the weight of the world had decided to shift to rest on his back as he futilely attempted to pull his shit together long enough to get his leg attached and clean up the best he could so the nurses wouldn’t have as much to deal with. Never mind that he still felt like a mess after brushing his teeth and changing into his beanie and three sizes too big pullover sweatshirt that had been large when he’d first gotten it.

Some days he felt like a terminal patient waiting for death rather than someone recovering from a tragedy.

And wasn’t that a bitch.

Without his trusty IV line to help with his balance, Adam was forced to either move ten times slower than usual and use the wall as a support, or he could suck it up and use the cane that he’d been left in case he needed it.

A classic game of pride vs. practicality.

But hey, he was already feeling low, so what was the point of spiting himself for no reason and causing more irritation down the road when he knew he would eventually have to return from wherever he wandered off to?

He grabbed the cane.

The communal room was abandoned like one would expect at the ripe time of two in the morning as he struggled to pull his chair over to the window. With the adrenaline surge clearing out of his system, his hands were shaking more than usual and he had the damn cane impeding his progress, which meant by the time Judy came by with a steaming (plastic) mug of herbal tea he was feeling more high-strung then when he’d initially been woken by the night terror.

“I’ll be in the nurses station in the main hall if you need anything.” She informed him, pulling over a small table to rest the mug on. “I know you’ll probably not be getting any more rest tonight.”

“Thanks Judy.” He managed a wan smile for her as she left.

Adam leaned his head against the wall as he usually did and let himself drift. He wasn’t really tired, but his brain was telling him that he needed to at least close his eyes so that the frazzled systems could attempt to reboot themselves. Instead, he focused on the sounds he could hear behind the walls. The low hum of electric currents, vents clicking and whirring as they turned on, the chunky rumble of some larger piece of machinery echoing in the quiet of the early morning.

Focused on sound, he could hear the faint shuffling of an IV line and a booted foot come shuffling his direction. Given his prior company a couple days prior, he felt he was confident enough to make an educated guess and say that it was Keith again.

Cracking open an eye, he was slightly pleased to see that he was right.

“I see you avoided Judy.” He said, voice croaky.

“I think she knew I was there.” Keith replied, petulant.

“Judy knows more about this place than anyone else. I wouldn’t be surprised.” Adam offered. In the back of his mind, he was pretty sure that one of his silent watchers would have deterred the woman from saying anything anyway. Did Keith know that he wasn’t as alone as he probably thought he was when he snuck out in the dark of night?

He coughed, clearing his throat as he reached for the cup of tea. It had cooled more than he thought, but it meant that he was able to hold it in his hands without worrying about scalding his skin. Not that one hand was going to be able to feel it anyway, but it was nice to pretend.

“How do you put up with this?” Keith asked next. Judging by the sound of his tone, and the quick side glance Adam spared his direction, he was referring to the IV and the booted leg he was struggling to deal with. His face was furrowed in an expression that was almost a mirror of the one he’d used to get whenever Shiro was trying to teach him something he wasn’t terribly interested in.

“You don’t. Especially not since the shit-show started down here.” Adam chuckled dryly. “Just when you think they’re done dragging in people you know, another one gets brought in- how are the rest of your team doing?”

He already knew the answer, but Adam figured it wouldn’t hurt to play dumb.

“Healing.”

“Good to hear.”

A beat of silence.

“Everyone’s alright. But we’ve been put under a watch to make sure since we’ve been hanging around ancient alien technology that no one other than the Holts seem to understand.” Keith started, tone shifting from even to frustrated.

“Is that part of the reason you’re making a break for it in the wee hours?” He couldn’t help but smile against the rim of his mug, taking a long, slow sip of the lukewarm liquid. “Don’t like being on lockdown much?”

“Not after spending as long as we have in space.” Keith said, shaking his head. “It’s beautiful out there. Even with the wars and the fighting.”

“I knew someone like that once.” Adam hedged his bets. “Used to always dream about getting up there.”

“What happened to them?”

“Dead.” Not a lie. The person Adam had known wasn’t coming back. The white haired, one armed captain of the Atlas was the new Shiro, and he was someone that Adam would not be able to touch.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It happened years ago. I moved on.” Adam said. “You ever wonder what’s out there in the desert?”

“Not anymore.” Keith replied. “I’ve had my fill of wondering what might happen if I go looking.”

“That’s a shame.” He mused. “I think I’ll live out there one day. Just me, the desert and the open sky. Way the hell away from the Garrison.”

It didn’t matter if his tone turned towards bitterness. The nurses might not have cared too much about the hierarchy of the Garrison, but he knew that Iverson was still trying to make a big deal about trying to blackmail him into staying at the Garrison for building him the experimental prosthetic. Not to mention that Adam wouldn’t have wanted to either way- too much bad blood had been bubbling up between himself and the institution he’d once trusted.

Good thing the lights weren’t on in the room, or he might have given himself away with the face he made.

“I hope you get there someday.”

“Me too.”

Much as the last encounter had gone, Keith dozed off not long after, leaving Adam a window of opportunity to make his great escape. Less great, more shuffling as quickly as he felt confident doing, the stupid cane another prop he wanted to set on fire somewhere, but the thought was there. Once again, he had to side step Keith’s silent Galra watcher, who blinked once in his direction; almost cat-like.

As much as he wanted to deny it, having the level of anonymity he did was nice. He’d survived two separate encounters with Keith now.

And yet he didn’t seem to have the common sense to stop going back to the communal room, every night he was able. It was like Keith could sense whenever he’d settled into the room and return, hobbling along on his boot and more and more rarely his IV.

They talked about everything and nothing, once they’d gotten over the initial awkwardness of two war vets trying to work through their feelings. Adam was carefully vague about anything that could tip Keith off that he knew who he was outside of being a paladin, while Keith seemed to not care about such things. Maybe he’d been stifled up in space and needed an outlet, Adam couldn’t tell.

Another week passed. Lance and Hunk were released from medical, as their injuries had been the most minor and apparently had cleared any of the tests that the scientists could possibly think up. Keith shared the news with two parts relief and one-part petulant exasperation.

Two weeks. Pidge was released- though technically, she could have left whenever she pleased. Adam wasn’t surprised in the least. Apparently Matt had arrived sometime beforehand and the trio of Holts had been tech-babbling for days. Colleen was still being kept busy elsewhere on the base with the food supply, given that it was her specialty.

Three weeks. Shiro was finally officially cleared, though he’d been given mostly free reign of the base due to his new status as captain of the Atlas. Unless they wanted to risk the new relationship with the man and the semi-sentient ship, they were probably wise to let him do what he pleased. Adam had been having a rough go of physical therapy that night and had probably seemed more on edge than usual. He’d said as much, voice clipped as his shoulder throbbed and his fingers spasmed.

Four weeks. Keith’s first day of physio with Aleary. It had taken him a couple of days before showing up with crutches and a much slimmer version of his boot. Adam hated that he felt so much fear that the other man had decided he had better things to do than talk to an emotionally distant cripple. Hated that some of those fears bled out during their conversation that night.

He was fine.

He wasn’t fine.

Five weeks and Keith was antsy. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why- his clearance was coming up and he was visibly excited as he lounged on the loveseat. Adam tried not to look too closely at how soft his features were as he spoke about his upcoming release from medical. And good for the guy- Adam knew first hand about how confining it felt to be locked up in a single building while being the absolute last thing that he wanted.

So he kept quiet.

Not his best idea, but it seemed the lesser of two evils compared to the last time he’d had to let someone go. He wouldn’t do it again unknowingly, as a stranger to the young man with a goddamn future ahead of him.

He pulled back.

Adam didn’t go to the communal room the next night, or the next.

Keith’s clearance date came and went. The room never seemed emptier than it did the first night he went back almost a week later when he hobbled in, a flask of whiskey smuggled in from one of his sources in the nurses ranks. What were they going to do, take away one of the last small joys he had left in life?

There he was, drinking alone in the middle of the night, moping. He didn’t care that the whiskey burned down his throat as he stared out at the horizon, thoughts drifting like balloons in the wind.

“What intent do you have with my son?”

He startled sharply, hand jerking toward a weapon that didn’t exist for a split second before releasing the intake of air he’d sucked in, glancing to see the very tall female Galra he’d come to realize was indeed Keith’s mother.

“I don’t have any intent with your son.” He settled for, keeping an eye on her tall form as she shifted into one of his visible peripheral views.

“You know him.” She persisted. Something in her tone was puzzled as she said it.

“I used to. A long time ago.” He conceded. It wouldn’t do him any good to lie, and besides- she was triggering all kinds of prey instincts in the back of his brain that he couldn’t help. “He’s grown up a hell of a guy.”

“We were trapped in a quantum abyss for two years.” She said carefully. “Maturity was bound to happen in some form or another.”

“I’m glad he turned out alright.” Adam said, a rueful smile tugging his lip upward. “After all the shit he went through, it’s good to see he managed to find his family.”

“Who were you to him?”

“No one he should have been involved with, if I’m being honest.” Adam whistled through his teeth, tilting his head as he took another swig of whiskey. “He didn’t know me as much as he knew Shiro, though. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say anything about it. I’m supposed to be dead, you know.”

She watched him with her unnerving amber eyes as he fell silent.

“Whatever relationship you may have had with my son, don’t throw what you have now away.”

“He has his entire life ahead of him. I’m not about to get in his way of that. Of what he has.” Adam shook his head. “You might be his mother, but there’s too much shit that’s been sitting too long from the past.”

“And you would ignore what companionship you created in the last few weeks because of something that happened in the past?”

“I don’t _have_ a future, okay?” Adam finally snapped, whirling to look her in the eye and immediately regretting his decision as his entire left side lit up like fireworks. He grunted, curling into himself as he tried desperately not to cry. Tears were _not_ what the situation called for right now, damnit!

To his complete and utter bafflement, there were gentle hands touching him, rubbing circles between his shoulders as he tried to get the air back into him as his side spasmed. Every time he thought he’d made any amount of progress, he would get into some stupid situation like this and prove just why he wasn’t getting out of here any time soon.

Even once he managed to relax his seized everything, the gentle grip that she had on him remained. The first genuine embrace he’d experienced since…

Well, it had been a while.

So sue him for wanting that moment to last for as long as humanly possible as he exhaled shakily and closed his eyes, pretending for a moment that it was the embrace of a mother. Not his- she’d disowned him years ago. Shiro’s, maybe. Before she’d passed away.

“You decide your future.” She said, voice rumbling around him like distant thunder, finally retracting herself and looking him in the eye with a warmth that reminded him of Keith.

“Yeah, well. My future doesn’t match up with the one they decided for me after they saved my life and gave me a new “experimental” prosthetic.” He replied, swiping at his eyes as subtly as he was able to under the circumstances. “Not everyone gets to live happily ever after. This is probably karma coming to bite me in the ass for everything I did when I was younger.”

“You are kinder than you realize.” The Galra said, head cocked as she retreated once again, giving him the rather needed personal space to pull himself together. “Sometimes bad things happen to good people.”

“Like your kid.” Adam denied. “Like any of those kids. They weren’t even twenty before they ended up fighting for the universe. Me? I was old enough to know better.”

God, he was starting to sound like a broken record.

“What will you do now that they’re gone?” she asked next.

“What I was already doing.” He said simply, weariness lining his bones. “Getting used to the new normal. Dreaming about the maybes of getting out of here one day.”

“Hn.” She replied, consideringly.

Adam closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose tiredly. When he dared look up again, she was gone.

-

Keith remembered the fall.

Remembered that split second of fear before the ground swallowed he and Black up and everything fell into silence.

He didn’t remember anything that came next. Didn’t remember getting pulled from the wreck, Shiro screaming his name as he tried to get him to breathe. Didn’t remember coming to when they had to set his leg, or shove a tube down his throat, or resuscitate him during surgery as they tried to save his life.

He’d been in a medically induced coma.

Krolia had been the one nominated to explain it to him, her voice achingly soft as she carded claws through his hair, half lidded eyes trying to focus on her familiar form. Head injury, apparently. Enough that they were concerned about his memory being affected by it.

It had been nothing but smothering, medication, a bunch of people trying to tell him what to expect, congratulate him on being part of the reason Earth was still a free planet. Iverson coming by to personally inform him that they were going to get medals for all they’d done for Earth.

Keith felt sickened by it. Never mind that he’d been dealing with sleazy diplomats from planets all over the universe. Never mind that he was the Black Paladin. Meeting with Iverson had left a foul aftertaste in his mouth and a general sense of unease that he was about to be thrown right back into the ring.

Maybe that was why he tried to take back even a fraction of his freedom by shuffling his way (pitifully) to the common room on the other side of the building. Thankfully on the same floor, but it meant getting out of the ICU unit and past the two nurse stations with his booted leg and an IV line. Which, he’d decided, he never wanted to be a part of again.

Altean medicine had really made him forget what a hassle Earth medicine was.

He hadn’t expected to run into another patient, but that was exactly what happened. An older man, the skin along his visible cheek a mottled hue of fresh scar tissue, wearing a beanie and oversized clothing.

Overall, he looked like he’d walked through Hell and come out the other side.

Keith apologized for disturbing him and the guy had instigated some kind of conversation that Keith only vaguely remembered due to the number of meds he was still required to be taking. If he was being completely honest with himself, he would take Coran’s cooking over them any day. Taking medication by mouth was literally like licking a weblum.

_Foul_.

Anyway, he remembered talking, and then he woke up to Krolia gathering him into her arms and returning him to his bed like he was a misbehaving kitten. Which, theoretically, he kind of was in Galra terms.

But then he ran into the man again. And again. And again. After a while, he stopped wondering when he was going to get out of bedrest and began wondering if he was going to run into the mystery man with the scars and the prosthetic leg. He’d been through a lot- Keith had learned that much from their late-night conversations. He knew the guy was a pilot and was a long-term member of the Garrison. He’d lost a very close friend of his years ago; he’d only mentioned said friend once- Keith suspected that friend had been more, but didn’t press for answers. He knew that he was a long-term resident of medical who had crashed a few months beforehand and was still recovering, that he knew all of the nurses by name and could tell Keith how to avoid them if necessary. Told him all of the ways to relieve nausea because of the pain meds and how to keep comfortable with his IV line in place.

More than anything else, Keith could sense the deep loneliness surrounding the man. It was almost like a cloud.

After weeks of watching all of the other paladins being cleared for duty and getting out as quickly as they were physically capable of, Keith was finally allowed to go too. His boot was still necessary until he’d finished with his physical therapy- because they’d heard about him from Shiro and his mother and they knew that he would most likely do something stupid despite his best efforts.

But his late-night companion wasn’t there in the days leading up to his clearance. Not the first, the second, or the third. Shiro asked him about why he was so quiet during their relocation off base, but he’d only shrugged, unable to pinpoint what exactly had him feeling so off about it.

It hit him during his first night off base.

Here he was, rubbing the fact that he was leaving base in the poor bastard’s face. Keith had been well aware of the fact that his companion was still recovering from a much more serious crash, knew that he was a part of the Garrison.

Fuck, he didn’t even know his name.

It didn’t seem to matter. Keith was quickly pulled back into the group of paladins, everyone relieved to see him back on his feet after spending so long in medical. For now, the Garrison had given them all apartments in a private building off base that would allow them some space from everything.

Keith immediately hated it.

He missed his pop’s old shack in the desert.

Krolia got a look in her eye when he mentioned as much, spending a couple of days off doing something or other that she was close-lipped about before returning as if nothing had happened. Obviously, that was suspicious enough, but Kolivan didn’t seem too concerned- granted, Kolivan was likely on his mother’s side, but regardless if he wasn’t worried than Keith wouldn’t spend too much time thinking about it either.

After that it was a routine of physio, getting integrated back into Garrison life, and trying to fix up the Voltron lions so that they would be able to get back in the game and finish cleaning up the mess that the Galra had left behind. His leg healed up with almost nothing to show for it other than the long line of slightly raised scar tissue along his shin.

Coran was horrified and intrigued about it at the same time.

A couple of months after being released, Keith found himself staying on base while he coordinated with the MFE’s- and James Griffith, who would’ve thought- on getting as much aid to the new list of damaged countries.

On a whim; perhaps in part guiltily, he stuck around in the common room for the night.

Nothing. He spent the hours watching the clouds move in over the horizon, his cheap coffee in hand, silently hoping that he’d be proven wrong. Come morning, he slunk out to the nurse station and flagged one of the women down. She came over with a smile, recognizing the paladin and leaning over her desk as she asked if there was something she could help him with.

“I’m actually looking for someone.” He said, embarrassed. “While I was here, there was someone I met in the common room. Green beanie, big sweater? I know it’s a long shot, but-“

“Oh, honey, you mean Adam?” the nurse- Judy, her nametag read- finished for him. “He’s not here anymore.”

Keith felt like the ground was shifting under his feet, clearing his throat as he asked the next question.

“Adam Wahim?”

“That would be him.” Judy beamed, glancing down at something on her desk. “Oh, pardon me. They’re paging me up.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

He felt like the world had suddenly shifted on his axis, brain finally putting the pieces of the puzzle together as it all made sense. Why he’d never actually looked in Keith’s direction, for one. He’d always assumed that it had to do with the scarring, but what if he just didn’t want Keith to recognize who it was? All of the people he’d referenced; that friend who’d died? Shiro.

Keith didn’t know if he should feel angry or numb. They’d been told Adam was dead- his name and photo were on the memorial wall, for fuck sake. Shiro had _mourned_ him!

That person who chuckled and said that he didn’t have a future?

It was all Adam.

Except that for all intent and purposes, he was supposed to be dead. Iverson had mentioned in passing that Adam had died in a crash- in reality, he’d been the one to crawl through the desert, bleeding out and refusing to die until he’d made it back to what he could possibly call home.

None of it meshed.

None of it made _sense_.

And yet, it did. It made _perfect_ sense, because Adam probably knew how Keith would react to finding out that the person he’d been confiding in was the same person that he’d trusted all those years ago. Who had thrown all of his mistakes back in his face for not immediately dropping everything and trying to help him prove that Shiro was alive when he’d been hurting just as much, if not more than Keith. Granted, he’d said some equally foul things, but looking back on it Keith had very likely deserved it.

And Shiro-

How was he supposed to tell Shiro that Adam wasn’t dead?

-

The dust bit at his cheeks as he rode out in the desert, coordinates programmed into his hoverbike and the events of the last few hours running circles around his brain. The sun was just beginning to descend over the distant mountains, but he knew from experience he still had a good amount of daylight left before it would truly get dark.

Keith should have known that Krolia had a hand in this.

After arriving back from the Garrison, he poured out all of his thoughts surrounding the exchanges, wondering how it was that Adam could just let him keep thinking he was an anonymous third party when in reality he was someone that they’d had to bury just like the rest of the casualties in the war that never seemed to truly end.

She let him get it out of his system, thankfully. She was a listener first and foremost, and it was part of the reason that she was such a good mother now.

“He had his reasons, Keith.” She finally said, gaze knowing as she touched his leg with a hand. “And his fears. Do not judge so swiftly when you do not truly know what purpose drove him.”

“He told you, didn’t he?” he demanded.

“I guessed.” She replied evenly. “I was a spy for many, many years. I am trained to notice the things that others do not.”

She had also given him a coordinate- for where Adam had gone.

It was a couple hours out in the middle of nowhere. Somewhere he wouldn’t have to worry about the Garrison trying to hunt him down and drag him back into the fold, kicking and screaming.

The shack was just barely bigger than his pop’s had been, showing clear signs of disuse and the attempts that had been put into to fixing it up. The beginnings of a wrap-around porch were there, the framework down and tools stored underneath the overhang of the roof to the side. A rocking chair was next to the door, sanded down and what Keith assumed to be paint sitting next to it.

He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it wind battered around his cheeks as he stepped up to the door, hesitating before knocking. The wood was thick, leaving his knuckles aching as he stood there, nervous energy working its way out of him with his fingers fidgeting with a loose thread of his jacket.

_“Alright, I’m comin- motherfuck, where the fuck-“_ a voice called back. Several loud bumps and bangs left Keith feeling mildly concerned until the door opened to reveal Adam’s face.

It was the first time he’d actually _seen_ him. Not just pieces of scar tissue in a dark room in the middle of the night with the faint light of the sky to give him a reference of image. Despite the warmth of the sun, he was still wearing his green beanie and baggy sweater, as well as a pair of glasses that didn’t fit the memory he had of the pair he’d had back when Keith was younger.

Adam looked-

He looked absolutely terrified to see Keith standing on his doorstep.

“Were you _ever_ going to tell me who you were?” Keith asked immediately, frustration bubbling under his skin. “Or were you hoping that, what? You’d just use me to make you feel better about yourself and then send me on my way?”

“Keith, I-“ Adam fumbled for words, that haunted, hunted look in his eye not leaving as his shoulders curled in on themselves.

“What? You _what_.” He demanded, pushing toward some unknown goal. Looking for a reason for why Adam had done what he had, looking to stir up the embers of the days he’d been a hotheaded kid looking for trouble?

“Would you have even stayed to listen to me if you’d known who I was from the start?” Adam snapped back defensively. “There’s too much shit that happened when Shiro disappeared that you’d just stand there and accept that it was me, and you and I both know that.”

“I-“ Keith paused, searching for an answer inside of him. Would he have stayed to listen, to hear Adam out if he’d known then? Or, would he have, in his literal and figurative hurt, taken the opportunity to lash out at someone who had hurt him?

“I wouldn’t have given you the reaction you think if you’d told me then.” He settled for instead. It was the closest answer he had to the truth. He’d grown up, sure, but there were still things that they needed to settle between them. “I thought you were dead. _Shiro_ thinks that you’re dead.”

“Iverson wanted me dead.” Adam’s lip curled. “Better to have no remnants of tactics that don’t work and put it on the pilot. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“You knew?”

“Of course I knew! I figured it out eventually- I just did it before Iverson wised up and transferred me to pilot training.” Adam growled. “But you wanted me to drop everything and go public with something that had absolutely _zero_ evidence to back it up.”

Unspoken went the rest of the fight that had followed.

“Why are you here, Keith.” Adam sighed, the fight leaving him in a gust. “You should be with your team.”

“Because dumbass war vet managed to make me feel something for him.” Keith replied immediately. “And apparently, he thought it would be no big deal to just leave everything as it was instead of trying to fix it.”

“What is there to fix, Keith? Me? There’s no fixing me.” Adam laughed, bitter. “I came out here to live out the rest of my life fixing up this shack and dealing with whatever demons come knocking at the door.”

“You stupid son of a-“ Keith groaned, grabbing him by the collar and pulling him in for a kiss.

-

Adam’s brain shorted out about the same time that Keith grabbed his collar, certain that he was about to get socked in the jaw. Instead, the exact opposite scenario played out as Keith pressed warm, wind chapped lips against his.

Error 404, Adam has left the building.

It wasn’t the finest moment- Adam’s mouth had opened instinctively and he got a lot more tongue than he had bargained for, but the next moment he found that his body responded as the hand not gripping his cane sunk into the warm leather jacket Keith was wearing and fell into the feeling.

The thing that they may have forgotten, however, was that Adam’s balance was complete shit, he’d managed to drop his cane somewhere between Keith beginning to kiss him and Adam’s need for oxygen winning out over continuing to kiss the very handsome man in front of him.

Which meant that he overbalanced and went down.

Or would have, if Keith hadn’t caught him around his waist and pulled him back upright like it was nothing. It probably was, actually. Adam knew that he’d lost weight, and Keith being part big buff alien probably had some kind of strength benefit to him.

“Am I supposed to swoon, or are we going to argue?” he asked dazedly.

Keith chuckled, wrapping his arms around Adam’s shoulders and burying his nose into Adam’s neck- which felt very nice, actually. He resisted the urge to get teary eyed at the gentle contact; seriously, when was the last time he’d been hugged so much in recent years?- instead cautiously wrapping his arms around Keith’s waist and allowing himself to relax ever so slightly. He could tell it didn’t get by Keith- his grip tightened marginally as they stood there, the sun setting in the background and painting a picture of two gay men hugging it out in the desert like a corny western film.

“You going to come in, or did you drive out her just to kiss and make up?” he said, pulling back and bending to grab his stupid cane off of the ground where it’d fallen.

“Yeah, sure.” Keith’s cheeks were distinctly flushed as he cleared his throat, not looking Adam in the eye as the older of the pair snorted in his throat and led the way.

It still wasn’t much to look at, but it was his. Krolia had blackmailed Iverson into letting Adam out of his contract with the Garrison- she hadn’t gone into detail, but Adam could put two and two together and figure it out. Probably had used some of those Galra intimidation tactics as Iverson handed over his severance pay and a bunch of other paperwork that essentially said that it was his retirement. Call it compensation for the bullshit he’d been put through.

(There would be no medal, thank Christ.)

There was a bed against one side of the room, remnants of the walls still visible. Bathroom was fine the way it was, and kitchen and living had also been dealt with. Krolia had been spending some time out with him to help get some of the bigger labor projects done. To be honest, he’d thought it was her knocking on his door.

Imagine his surprise to find Keith there instead.

“It’s a work in progress.” He said, limping into the kitchen to grab the drink he’d been making before taking his hip out on the counter.

“It’s bigger than what I had.” Keith commented, noting the distinct lack of personal effects and any photographs. When Shiro and Adam had been together, pictures and mirrors had lined the walls of their rooms. Mirrors to bring more light into the room, the photos due to Adam’s gleeful need to document everything that Shiro did as the Garrison’s golden child.

It was just another sign of the shit that they’d all gone through since then.

“That’s what Krolia said too.” Adam snorted. “So, what now, cowboy?”

He cocked a brow in Keith’s direction, no doubt able to tell that he’d gone into this without thinking for a second about what he was going to do once he’d ended up on his doorstep. Sighing, he grabbed the half empty bottle of whatever it was he was drinking and hauled it over to the couch with him, speed halved without the help of the cane.

He was going to set that thing on fire the second he didn’t need it anymore, so help him God.

Keith wasn’t much of a drinker- after nunvill, alcohol had turned off in appeal for him. But he sipped at the glass Adam handed him, the other man drinking right out of the bottle as he stared at nothing.

A comfortable silence settled between them; one drink turned into two. Two turned into Adam sighing and leaning his weight over the side of the couch as he hissed and rubbed at the prosthetic, features pinched as he silently mouthed curses.

“You have phantom pain?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“Fucking sucks.” Adam ground out, breathing through it the best he could. “Like a kick in the gut every time I think I might be getting better.”

There wasn’t much that Keith could do other than offer silent support, Adam finally hissing air out through his teeth as he visibly relaxed. Lucky, Keith noted. He knew that Shiro had sometimes had episodes lasting a couple of days before he’d sucked it up and asked for help. Or exhausted all of his available means of managing it.

Somewhere between drink three and Adam finishing the bottle, they ended up against a wall, Adam’s hands entangled in Keith’s hair as Keith kissed every inch of skin available to him. Which wasn’t much between the beanie and the oversized sweater, to be fair.

Adam was torn between letting himself enjoy Keith’s gentle touches and hiding himself in the shadows of the room as things turned heated. Keith was gentle- so damn gentle- as he practically carried Adam to bed, lying him down and leaning over him with liquid galaxy in his eyes. The sun had set by now, the dark of the desert night settling over the cabin and offering him some camouflage from sight.

He tensed up on instinct when Keith’s hand tugged at the hem of the sweater, asking against the skin of his jaw if he could.

“It isn’t pretty.” Adam warned.

Keith gave him a Look. “I didn’t know what you looked like for _weeks_ , Adam. I didn’t get this far expecting perfect.”

Adam appreciated the dry tone and matter-of-fact statement. It made some of this easier considering the many, many issues he had with his body nowadays. Too thin, too much scarring, missing a leg, shaky hand- the list could go on for a while if he was allowed to rambled about it.

“Carefully.” He replied, earning another soft look as Keith’s hands carefully maneuvered the sweater over his head, leaving him bare from the waist up. There wasn’t a lot of point trying to get more than one shirt on, and besides; his energy was depleted after the sweater as it was.

As it was, Keith hissed out a sound once the sweater came off, sympathetic as his hands traced the scarring that wrapped around Adam’s pectoral and most of his stomach, the skin several shades lighter than his more olive coloring.

He did his best not to look. Even now, it was still fresh enough that it triggered some feral need to hide himself, loathing the way that it made him feel and reliving the event that had left the marks behind.

Keith let out a sound in the back of his throat before his cool hands returned to their previous task, tweaking a nipple as he suckled a mark into Adam’s shoulder. Overstimulation came pretty quickly, Adam finding himself achingly hard as he bucked into Keith’s steady weight with a whimper.

It was… an embarrassingly long time since he’d bothered having sex, and with all of the missions against the Galra he couldn’t say that there had been time to work an orgasm out of himself at any point in time.

(Never mind that with all the medication he’d been on lately the drive just wasn’t really there.)

Certain that Adam was worked up to a suitable point, Keith shifted his weight so that he could peel out of his leather jacket and long-sleeved shirt, revealing far more scars than Adam would have expected.

A moment of shock stilled him as he took in the biggest one- a long line that was easily six inches long against his shoulder. It had to have been deep, with the way that Keith moved with it. Others littered his abdomen, most of them small. One started just above his left hip and disappeared under the waistband of his jeans.

“Holy shit.” He breathed, hands touching the marks as he wondered what Keith had been through to get those marks. Knowing how the Galra operated made him shudder as it was- it was easy to forget that Keith hadn’t just been fighting them; he’d likely been in close combat, been captured or tortured.

“Hey. Don’t disappear in your head.” Keith chided, caging Adam in again as he pressed a chaste kiss to the side of his temple. “I’m okay. I survived. You survived. We made it.”

Adam closed his eyes, centering himself before nodding. Keith made a noise in the back of his throat, calloused palms rubbing over his hips before going to the waistband of the tightly knotted sweatpants he’d commandeered as his usual attire.

“Can I?”

Anxiety rolled in on the horizon; Adam had to think about it before slowly nodding. This was Keith. Keith was safe. So far he’d been nothing but gentle and patient and listened to everything he’d said.

“I see your Boy Scout knots are as good as ever.” The dark-haired man chuckled, working at the fabric for a moment before they loosened.

“When you lose this much weight, you have to use the fancy knots to keep your pants up.” He replied wryly as Keith snorted, carefully tugging the fabric down.

The glide of the fabric against his heated skin was enough to have him remembering his breathing exercises, Keith’s hands infinitely patient as he lifted one leg, then the other to slip him free from the article of clothing. It made him feel safe and secure; something that he would admit freely to being unable to feel for a long, long time. Never mind that he still had his boxers on- Keith mirrored him as he shimmied out of his pants far more gracefully than he should have been able to considering how tight the fabric was against his skin.

Adam felt like he should be fanning himself, because every part of Keith was muscled and toned. The scar he’d been eying at his pelvis looked like someone had tried to hack off his leg at the groin, twisting in toward his inner thigh.

“Lube?” Keith asked, dark eyes gleaming from the light of the moon in the window.

“Bathroom, I think. Under the sink.” Adam managed.

Keith nodded, sauntering off that direction; Adam couldn’t help but map out the myriad of scars that spanned Keith’s sculpted shoulders and lower back as he struggled upright, figuring that he wasn’t going to be moving from the bed one way or the other in the near future. His hands worked at the joint, unclipping it from the port and setting it next to the mattress as Keith returned, bottle of lube in hand.

He didn’t say anything about the lack of a leg, which Adam appreciated. Mentally, he was churning out puns that he could roll with. He couldn’t help it; it was kind of a nervous thing that had only gotten worse since the crash.

He shivered when Keith popped the lid of the lube open, the sound automatically triggering a primal reaction as he realized that yes- he was indeed about to have sex for the first time in way too long and he was one hundred percent looking forward to it. His cock was hard now, soaking through the fabric still covering it as Keith slipped a hand underneath his waistband, sharp eyes watching his reactions.

Adam groaned as Keith’s fingers took him in hand, slowly dragging out the slide of skin against skin as he returned to lavishing Adam’s collarbone with nips and licks. Thankfully, he seemed to realize how sensitive the scars were, leaving the discolored flesh alone as he worked on the other available canvas. The dark-haired man slid a leg over Adam’s single one, fitting neatly in the space that the stump afforded him.

Hey, _there_ was something he could utilize in the future.

He arched into Keith’s grip as his fingers tightened ever so slightly, pulling him out of thought and re-depositing him back into reality. Judging by the smirk on Keith’s face, he knew exactly what he’d done and was completely unrepentant about it.

Asshole.

Adam’s eyes narrowed, swinging his good arm around Keith’s neck and pulling him down, ignoring the twinge in his side as his weight settled more firmly on top of him in favor of grinding up against him in his new angle. Keith let out a curse under his breath, eyes hooded as he exhaled slowly.

“You don’t have to be gentle, you know.” Adam growled out. “I’m not that fragile.”

“You’re right.” Keith admitted with a half smile. “But you deserve to be treated gently.”

And oh, that did things Adam wasn’t aware about as arousal simmered in his veins. He bucked up into Keith’s grip, chasing a release that was just out of reach while simultaneously grinding against the bulge he could feel in Keith’s briefs. It didn’t take long before he shuddered through his first, Keith’s hand milking him through it as he tried to chase the remnants of it as long as he could.

They fell together naturally, a rhythm building between them even as they worked the last vestiges of clothing off of themselves. Adam already knew that his underwear was a write-off with the amount of slick and cum that was all over them. But Keith didn’t have to look so smug about it as he tossed his own underwear over his shoulder somewhere, intent on devouring Adam alive if that look had anything to say.

A finger teased at the rim of his ass as they readjusted their positions, a thumb slowly pushing into him with the aid of lube and cum alike. Adam shivered at the stretch of it, the slow burn as Keith worked him open, stretching him on one, two, three fingers, leisurely enough that there was almost no pain and especially so once he figured out where his prostate was.

He might have said a few things that under any other circumstances would be viewed as highly inappropriate but in the moment only served to amuse his partner; Keith buried his face in Adam’s thigh to stifle the sound of his snickers as he pumped his fingers into his ass.

Romantic, he knew. Truly, he had a way with men.

However, he did finally get his wish as Keith carefully extracted himself from the situation down under and gathered Adam into his arms, leaning back so that he was situated in the paladin’s lap. It meant that Adam would be more supported with his weaker limbs, as well as a heck of a lot closer to the pretty face that was now readily available to kiss.

Which he did. Enthusiastically.

If this was a dream, he was going to milk it for all it was worth, okay?

Keith lined himself up and carefully pushed in; Adam immediately groaned at the immediacy of how full he felt, leaning his head on Keith’s shoulder and riding it out as he slid further down the apparently infinite amount of dick Keith had until evidently reaching the end.

“Fuck.” He stated simply, sure that that was an adequate word for the situation.

“That’s the idea.” Keith grinned, scar against his cheek stretching with the movement. Compared to the others that he’d already seen, it somehow didn’t register on Adam’s radar that Keith even had one. It looked more like a tattoo with how dark it was.

To punctuate his point, he shifted, cock rubbing everything the right way as the weight shifted. Adam would not admit to the piteous noise he made, but it wasn’t his fault and he would stick to that excuse until his dying day. He lost himself in the sensation as Keith rocked up into him, settling into a quick ebb and flow of pleasure as Adam’s cock twitched in interest where it was pinned between them.

Neither of them did much talking after that.

Adam was left gasping as Keith worked up to a ruthless pace, slamming into him and cock dragging along his prostate on the way out every time. It was exactly what he needed to ground him as he shook apart at the seams, conflicted on a lot of things as Keith ground up into him. His cock jerked weakly as a second orgasm ripped through him, a hoarse cry leaving his throat as he sagged into Keith’s chest. Aforementioned man with his dick in his ass rutted up into him once, twice, and then came, Adam’s rim weakly pulsing around his length as the pair rode out the aftershock.

It wasn’t fair how easily Keith was able to move them both so they were lying down, nuzzling into Adam’s neck as he slipped out of him. They laid like that until Keith finally pushed himself upright and went back into the bathroom. Adam could hear him moving around in there, half curious to know what he was up to until he returned with a damp cloth to wipe him down with.

He hummed tiredly as the friction aggravated some of the scar tissue, but made no move to get away from it. Maybe he just had a thing for pain but it kind of felt nice and he was comfortable where he was.

Keith finished his work before rejoining Adam, an arm twining around his waist as he curled into his side. Neither of them said anything, comfortable and quiet as they enjoyed one another’s company.

Since all of this shit started, Adam could say that he felt as much at ease as he could. In the morning, he’d have to talk to Keith, finish sorting out boundaries and if this had been a one-off thing, sate his need to clarify everything with how damn insecure he’d become over the years. But the fact that Keith had stayed, dozing and steady next to him, spoke volumes.

And hey, maybe he’d stay and help finish building the porch.


End file.
